A Family Divided
by melancholyxdreams
Summary: Hannah lets you in on some family secrets no one is supposed to know.
1. All About Hannah

Hey, guys. This is my second 'Stand By Me' story. Please let me know if you like it! My other SBM story is called 'Yesterday Has Gone' and it's complete, if you'd like to check that out too. Thanks!

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My name's Hannah Elise Shaw. I'm 14-years-old and I grew up in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. There's nothing much really to do here, and in the winter, forget about it. It's pretty much dead. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about my family. It's pretty messed up. I mean, MY family's pretty well off, I suppose, but there's a nasty underside that we're not supposed to talk about, but all my family does anyway. My Mom is one of the nosiest busybodies in town. The part of my family that was rotten(so to speak, I know some of them are, but we are family after all.)was my Dad's brother's family, the Chambers'.

Of course, I knew ALL about my relatives, but that didn't mean I ever went to see them. In fact, I was pretty much banned from seeing them. What a pisser, huh? I had been close friends with Chris up to the age of five, and then I was yanked away from that house like it had been on fire. I had never even got to know Chris's younger brothers and sister. We all knew about his oldest brother who was still up in Shawshank for doing something really bad to a girl(though they never talked about them, oh no.). We knew Rich(or EYEBALL)hung around with his j.d. buddies 24/7, and one of those buddies included Ace Merrill. And if you were friends with Ace, you wanted to stear clear at least a couple miles down the road. They never really had anything bad to say about Chris, I guess he was just caught up in a bad family. His pop, well, whenever he was mentioned, my mother sniffed and said "HE's the reason they're all like that. It's all his fault." And my poor Aunt Jane. I missed seeing her alot. I remember she used to give me a flower from her front garden everytime I'd come to visit. I still had all of those flowers, pressed in a book that was hidden away in my dresser.

They couldn't stop me from seeing Chris in school, of course, so I'd regularly get updates about the family then(and no, I never told my mother anything. She found out through her own "sources"). By now, I knew so much about his younger sibs that I really wanted to meet them, but that was entirely out of the question. I would have been grounded until I graduated.

Chris and I were standing next to his locker at the end of a school day towards the beginning of June. He had just finished telling me that his mother had been looking through old photo albums and pictures of me and him kept coming up. I smiled. "How's Aunt Jane doing?", I asked. Chris sighed. "Good, I guess. She's been spending alot of time at Aunt Mary's. My dad's been..." His voice trailed off. I put my hand on his shoulder consolingly. "I'm sorry, Chris. I wish there was something I could do." He shook his head. "I don't want you to get involved in anything, Hannah. I mean it, okay? Your Dad would kill me if anything happened to you because of my Pop."

After that announcement, I felt a hand on my own shoulder. It was Gordie. Gordie LaChance was my best friend, as well as Chris's. "You guys okay?" he asked, looking at both of our faces. I nodded. I never told Gordie anything about Chris's issuses unless he told me it was alright. That's just the way it was. Gordie held up his hand and Chris clapped it loudly. "Yeah, man. We're okay." Chris gave me a knowing look, and I knew from that moment everything was far from being okay.


	2. Sneaking

Oh, in case you're wondering, "How come her last name isn't Chambers?" Well, my father wanted to separate us from his brother and his family, so we wouldn't be scrutinized as much(though it really didn't help any), so he legally had his name changed to his great-grandmother's last name, Shaw. I don't mind it, but I kind of think it's stupid to try to hide that sort of thing from people. (I'm one to talk, I should tell my parents I go over and visit my aunt and cousins, but I'd be grounded for a month.) 

It was a Saturday. All had been pretty quiet. There had been no news from Chris about Aunt Jane or the kids, and I couldn't help wondering that was a bad thing. I hated it when things were quiet like that. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane and you wanted to get out as fast as you could. But I couldn't bring attention to it. My mother would sniff, avoid my eyes, and pretend I hadn't asked anything at all. My father would rant on and on for about an hour, then trail off. There was just no point in it. So that afternoon, I called up Gordie, who was hanging out with Teddy and Vern for the first time in a couple of weeks. I asked if I could go over to his house, have him help me sneak over to Chris's.

"Sure," Gordie said. I could hear Vern and Teddy laughing at a cartoon on the television in the background. Teddy shouted, "Who are you talking to, LaChance?" I heard the sound of Gordie's hand covering up the mouthpiece. "Hannah, you wet end. Shut up, will you?" I laughed. "Tell Teddy I said hi." Gordie shouted, "She says hi, you loser." Teddy snickered. I rolled my eyes. "They're a bunch of...", I was about to say pussies, but my mother walked by, immersed in a cookbook. She was making notations with a pencil and muttering, "I would like Margaret to make that... and that... and..." She went around the coner, still mumbling to herself.

"Yeah, anyway," Gordie continued. "Come on over. I know Chris is home, I talked to him about an hour ago. He... he seems alright, Hannah." I sighed. "I hope so. Okay, I'll be right there." Gordie hung up first. I placed the phone in the cradle and scribbled a note saying where I'd be, leaving it on the table.

(Sorry this chapter's short, I'm having a bit of writer's block for this story. Any ideas, send them my way, you will be credited for them!)


	3. Stolen Moments

I felt like I was in a spy movie, like the ones that were on televison on Saturday evenings. I was in the middle of a huddle that was Chris, Gordie, Teddy and Vern, and crouched down a little so no one could really see me while walking down Everett Street. Everyone in Castle Rock knew each other, and for sure one of Mom's fellow gossip-mongers would see me on the way to the Chambers' house and tell my parents. I couldn't take that risk. So even if I did feel foolish for the way I was walking and with my blonde hair in my face, I would do it, lest suffer the consequences later. 

"Okay, we're here," Gordie announced, and I dared to look up. Sure enough Chris's small house was there on my right.

"Dad's not going to be back until suppertime," Chris said. Our little huddle broke up and we each walked over to his front door. "But somebody should keep lookout anyway, just..." He looked at me nervously. "Just in case."

I nodded, then caught a glimpse of Aunt Jane in the kitchen window. She was looking out at us, waving. "Here goes nothing," I muttered, and opened the door.

I was swept up almost immediately into a huge hug from my Aunt. She smelled like cookies. My mother never smelled like that because our maid alway did the cooking.

"Hannah Elise, you look lovely, honey," Aunt Jane exclaimed, tugging off her oven mitts and holding me at arms length. "And you've gotten so tall! The things I've missed out on..." she trailed off, her voice dripping with bitterness.

She turned to Chris. "Christopher, you shouldn't have brought her here. You know your father."

Chris cut her off. "It's okay, Mom. One of the guys is going to be on the lookout. The first sign of Dad, I'll help Hannah sneak out the back door. She really wanted to see you and the kids." Aunt Jane sighed, but didn't say anything else about it.

"Would you kids like some cookies?"

Gordie, Teddy and Vern all murmured in agreement. "Yeah, sure. Great, they smell amazing..." We all trooped into the Chambers' very tiny kitchen. It was about the size of my own bathroom at home, I thought, looking around sadly at the ripped wallpaper and the holey curtains above the sink.

As we were chowing down on our cookies and a small glass of milk each, I heard scuffling around the farthest corner.

"Hmmm," I said loudly, smiling at my Aunt. "Either you have lots of mice on the loose, or those have to be a couple of little troublemakers."

A head poked around the corner as soon as I said that, followed by a couple of more heads. Aunt Jane smiled at the children with dirty noses and said, "This is your cousin Hannah. Do you remember her?" The middle one, Emery, nodded shyly.

"You came over last Christmas, right?", he asked.

"That's right," I said. "You guys are getting so big!" Emery's cheeks turned pink.

"You were nice," he said. "You gave me a candy cane."

I grinned. "Yes. Did you like it?"

He nodded, stepping slowly out from around the corner and coming into the kitchen.

"I..."

Emery didn't get to finish his sentence because his siblings shouted suddenly, "Daddy!", and dissapeared back around the corner.

"Oh, shit!", Chris said. His mother gave him a threatining look, but he shrugged her off. "We forgot to keep watch, and of course he came home early. Come on, Hannah!" He grabbed me by the arm, and we jetted across the impossibly tiny living room to the back door.

"'Bye, Aunt Jane!", I shouted, tears starting to fall down my cheeks. This wasn't fair. I shouldn't have to run away from my family and leave them with a man they were scared of.

Chris shoved me non-too-gently out the door, while saying "I'll see you in school.", and slamming the door. Less than thirty seconds later, Gordie, Teddy and Vern were shoved out the door in the same fashion as I had been. Teddy had a big "Don't touch me" scowl on his face, Vern looked confused, and Gordie looked the way that I felt.

"Come on, we gotta go," he muttered, kicking hard at a clump of grass. We all followed him in the safety of the backyard, got into our huddle again, and walked silently back to Gordie's house.


End file.
